20VC: TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen on The Future of Business and Personal Travel & Layoffs; How To Do Them The Right Way & Maintain Company Culture and Morale
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Ariel Cohen is the Founder & CEO @ TripActions, the company trusted by more than 4,000 companies to manage their business travel and expenses. To date, Ariel has raised more than $980M with TripActions from the likes of Lightspeed, Oren Zeev and a16z to name a few. Prior to TripActions, Ariel co-founded StreamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform which was acquired by Jive Software. Prior to StreamOnce, Ariel led Product Management in a senior leadership role at Hewlett-Packard.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ariel made his way into the world of tech and came to change the way we think about business travel today with TripActions?
2.) What are TripActions doing in their business to be there for their partners, customers and suppliers in the long term? TripActions engaged in layoffs, how did Ariel approach the size of layoff required? What is the right way to do layoffs? How does this change in a remote world?
3.) Given the uncertainty, how does Ariel advise founders to assess and correct their burn and spending? What is a reasonable amount of runway to reserve for? For those hit hard on the demand side, what can they do to build durable defensibility when they can't scale demand?
4.) How does Ariel view the future of business travel? Does Zoom replace much of the business trips? What will the landscape look like in 3 years? What players will survive? Who will thrive?
5.) From a founder psychology perspective, what has Avi done to cope in these very challenging times? What has worked? What has not worked? What does Ariel advise founders struggling to cope psychologically? What can investors do to be there for their founders?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Ariel’s Fave Book: Mr Vertigo
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back on the 20-minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and if you'd like to suggest either |
| 0:03.6 | guests or questions for future episodes, you can on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with |
| 0:08.9 | 2Bs, and it would be great to see you there. |
| 0:10.9 | But to our show today, and COVID has obviously impacted so many different firms in many |
| 0:15.0 | different ways, but the travel space more than any other. |
| 0:17.8 | This company today sadly had to lay off 350 people in March, |
| 0:21.5 | and so I really wanted to speak to their founder, and I'm delighted to welcome their founder |
| 0:24.6 | today, Ariel Cohen, founder and CEO at Trip Actions. The company trusted by more than 4,000 |
| 0:29.8 | companies to manage their business travel and expenses. To date, Aral has raised over $980 million |
| 0:35.0 | with trip actions from some of the best in the business, |
| 0:37.6 | including Lightspeed, Orrin Zeeve and Andresen Horrors, to name a few. |
| 0:41.2 | Prior to Trip Actions, Ariel co-founded Stream Once, a business multimedia integration platform, |
| 0:46.2 | which was acquired by Jive Software. |
| 0:48.0 | And prior to Stream Once, Ariel led product management in a senior leadership role at Hewlett-Packard. |
| 0:52.4 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you, both the Araf Yan Mohammed at Lightspeed and to Oranzeev for some fantastic questions |
| 0:57.8 | suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we move into the show today, I'm sure |
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